1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer software for composing real-time musical soundtracks for interactive applications.
2. Background Information
Musical scores play an important role in a user's experience of interactive applications (including, but not limited to, video games). The video game industry in particular has struggled to find a mechanism capable of providing dynamic musical scores that are relevant both to the action and emotional context of the game. Real-time, computer-generated music has so far not been employed in a way that makes use of its full capabilities for interactivity or emotionally relevant musical scoring. The present system has many advantages over current dynamic and non-dynamic music systems.
Current non-dynamic computer-generated music scoring systems (Zen Strings [www.zenstrings.com], Automatic Soundtrack Generator [U.S. Pat. No. 6,608,249], or Scorebot [Master's Thesis submitted to the University of Leeds, UK, August 2000 by Steven M. Pierce]) are designed to provide computer-generated music for accompaniment purposes, but are not designed to respond to real-time input. The scores they generate are possibly unique from one instance of running the program to the next, but not unique to a particular user's interaction with the environment in question. One cannot, as a system user, expect musical change in real-time according to user actions.
Current dynamic music systems (for example, LucasArts dynamic music system [U.S. Pat. No. 5,315,057], Microsoft's DirectMusic [U.S. Pat. No. 6,433,266], Nintendo's interactive music system [US Patent Application #20030037664]), and other current methods employed by the industry depend on pre-recorded musical chunks that are re-combined in real-time to create variation. This is inherently limited and cannot address the full potential of computer music possibilities in offering theoretically infinite and emotionally relevant variation. It is also a labor-intensive process to have to pre-compose the musical variations and assign them to be played by the system in particular situations. Hence an easier-to-use and more-powerful solution to real time scoring of media applications is highly desirable.